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1452 Don Casey, CEO of Dentsply Sirona, on COVID-19 & the Dental Product Market : Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran

9/3/2020 3:00:00 AM | Comments: 0 | Views: 598

Donald Casey is Chief Executive Officer of Dentsply Sirona. He has more than 30 years of global health care experience and an outstanding track record in identifying and commercializing medical innovations. He most recently served as Chief Executive Officer of the Medical segment of Cardinal Health, a leading manufacturer and provider of medical products and supply chain services to hospitals, laboratories, physician offices, surgery centers and other sites of care across the health care continuum. Mr. Casey serves on the board of the nonprofit Gary and Mary West Senior Dental Center organization and previously had served on the boards of AdvaMed, the James Foundation, Surgical Specialties (formerly AngioTech) and West Corp. He earned a bachelor’s degree in finance and a master of business administration degree from the University of Notre Dame.

VIDEO - DUwHF #1452 - Don Casey

AUDIO - DUwHF #1452 - Don Casey

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It is just a huge honor for me today to be podcast interviewing Donald Casey Jr chief executive officer and member of the board of directors of Dentsply Sirona if you're really old like me you might have remembered when it was the dental supply company in 1893. he has more than 30 years of global healthcare experience and an outstanding track record in identifying and commercializing medical innovations he most recently served as CEO of the medical segment of cardinal health a leading manufacturing provider of medical products and supply chain services to hospitals laboratories physicians offices surgery centers and other sites of care across the health care continuum under Don Casey’s leadership as the CEO of the medical segment he repositioned the segment and delivered consistent revenue and operating income growth meaningful margin expansion and help position the segment for sustainable growth going forward prior to cardinal health he served as CEO of the Gary and Mary west wireless health institute a non-profit research organization focused on lowering the cost of health healthcare through novel technology solutions from 2010 to 2012 previously served as worldwide chairman for Johnson the largest medical company ever comprehensive care group and member of the company's executive committee where he oversaw its cardiovascular diagnostic diabetes and vision care franchises around the world Mr. Casey began his career with Johnson in 1985 advancing into executive positions throughout the company's consumer pharmaceutical and medical device franchises he serves on the board of the non-profit Gary and Mary west senior dental center organization and previously had served on the boards of ADVO med the James foundation surgical specialties and I could I could go on and you have an MBA from the university of Notre Dame oh my gosh uh that was uh that's a big school in our family um the largest publicly traded b2b dental stocks today um henry shine comes in at 10 billion and dense flight supply surrounding comes in at 9.9 so if both of those stocks barely if shine just barely goes down and surrounded barely goes up uh and to put that in perspective in vista which is what Danaher spun off the dental vision it only has a market cap of three Patterson only has two and a half 3d systems is only a half and uh the largest publicly traded b2c dental stocks of course is a lion and smiles drag so this is a big treat for my homies today to be able to talk to uh the biggest man in dentistry I mean uh it's just amazing don thank you so much for coming on the show today to talk to my homies about all things dental and I just want to get right to the um right to the point well guys there's so many things we can talk about but um welcome to dentistry you've been in dentistry now what how long now two and a half years two and a half years Howard uh at dense place serona prior to that at j I had spent some time back uh you know Howard if you're as old as you and I are you'd remember the a company that j had you know a little ethical business and uh I was one of the people who bought Listerine from warner lambert and brought it into j so uh brushes with dental but nothing nearly as intense as the last two and a half years so I want to start with macroeconomics and dentistry has always been about five percent of the healthcare picture and it's always been weird um I remember one time I was flying American airlines asked there was a doctor on board and I went up there and I was the only one no one else raised her and I went up there and she goes well you're not a doctor you're a dentist and then she went to the other she goes do we have a nurse or and I’m like you just downgraded me to a nurse are you I mean I pull wisdom teeth and please and let's say but um why um how is dentistry unique to health care well it you know first I actually like the whole idea that it's healthcare Howard and I would tell you some of the things that we've got to do post pandemic is continue really banging home the message that you know oral health is a harbinger for total health and I believe that since looking at studies for the last 25 30 years and you know how dentistry is unique um in a lot of ways particularly in north america it still is an individual practitioner you haven't seen large chains you know dsos are coming but it's probably a little bit behind physician and hospital consolidation technology wise pretty good I mean just in terms of the pace of innovation and accessing you know new ideas and new technology pretty good but uh you know in my opinion I think the great opportunities we have over the next three to five years around growth are going to be two things I mean the first is going to be aesthetics you know whether that's clear aligners or implants and the second is how do we really make sure that we are the gatekeeper of oral health which you know every study that i've ever looked at shows it's probably the most effective spend from a healthcare dollar in terms of prevention so you know I dentistry to me is by the way a great business to be in and we've got a great group of customers dentists uh you know I think we've got a good group of manufacturers and I think we're very early in a in what I think will be a pretty productive five to ten year run on technology you know every dental company that I read a 10k annual report from the sec it's always the same it's like Europe or america is about the same usually it's like 35 to 40 you're 40 um Europe um well no uh about that or you're bigger in Europe but so Europe probably 40 percent USA probably 40 Latin america five percent um Asian japan five percent Canada four um is um what is the main difference between if you're forty percent Europe and forty percent uh us Canada what is the main difference between the delivery of dentistry in Europe would you say versus united states and Canada uh two principal differences first the reimbursement system in and let's call it developed Europe a little bit different in Russia Poland and other places but uh how the government interacts from a healthcare perspective and what they reimburse for dentistry is different there I mean you know with dental insurance here you do have pockets that are insured you have pockets that are not insured uh the second really in terms of delivery of dentistry um there's not as many specialists as the first thing in the second they really haven't uh seen the development of the hygiene the you know the hygienist position so you see a lot of you know single dentists doing everything from prevention to treatment in the same office so uh you know the delivery is a little bit different in terms of the complexity of the offices or the amount of operators you know when dentists always you know dentists are always complaining and I can call I can throw my homies under a bus because I’m just telling like it is but um they always complain that the insurance companies don't pay them enough and then they they're thinking I’m just going to drop my insurance but if you look at these charts where dental inta where dental insurance subsidies I mean if you want more or something subsidize it if you want less of something tax it and regulate it um you're big in Europe and Canada I mean Europe and the united states and Canada and then the rest of the world that doesn't really have a strong government reimbursement for dentistry if there's no big subsidies dentistry's not that huge is it yeah it's a little bit more underdeveloped so if you kind of took a swath Howard like you took japan new Zealand Australia like Hong Kong there you know there's an organized uh whether it's a dental insurance or in in the Japanese case you know there is some government work but it it's uh in china where it's all private pay uh and stuff like that the market develops very differently than what you see in in north america which is tends to be a little bit more of a holistic hey we've got to be you know focusing on prevention and you know kind of patient management through a life cycle and you know I had this long conversation with dennis the other day here in town and uh I didn't even know what to say I mean he was just going on and on and on about how Maddie is about how much he has to write off between what his fee is and what the insurance fee is he's all upset I mean you're all upset because the insurance company won't pay that amount well I’ll tell you what buddy take off the gloves why don't you just go straight to the market I mean why don't you go uh just straight out there fee for service cash it's like they have this entitlement they're like but this is my fee and the insurance company should pay for it well dude free enterprise supply and demand if I go out there on the street corner and say I’ll wash your car for a million dollars and no one stops it just is what it is hey um you got a did you ever get the chance to meet john miles yes oh my god love that guy how's he doing uh I haven't seen him since I since we kind of moved the company out of Europe but he's doing great I mean you know one of the if you if you really kind of track the history of Dentsply uh you know john miles is the is the person that built the company you know just in terms of really had a broad vision for how do we offer an entire landscape of consumable products around critical conditions and you know in so many ways the culture that he set up is what still lives in the company today so last I saw him he was great uh but you know again he is uh we had a cool thing in new york where we had pictures of the of the prior presidents and I always wanted to move him up you know okay you know Gary Kunkle was there and a bunch of others but I always wanted to say okay john in so many ways I was the luckiest little boy in the world when I started lecturing I started lecturing in 1990 I just celebrated my 30-year anniversary of lecturing and so at the time I was like the youngest guy out there and he set up this uh think tank and Chicago airport at the Hyatt where it'd be every plan and he had a Gordon represent the old dentist and he chose me to be the young dentist and I couldn't believe it so every year for like five years and I just that guy I mean he was so informative and he just he taught me so much so you know they say uh marriage is you know marriage is uh it is what it is they're stressful and you got married uh in 19 in 2017 john miles Dentsply uh married serona and everybody said it was a great thing because uh um Sirona was centered on dental equipment and Dentsply was uh consumable so on February 29 uh 2016. yeah you got married so you so it's your almost your four-year wedding anniversary how's that you weren't there for the first two years of the marriage yeah but how's the marriage going uh today I think it's going well I think we probably spent two years trying to work through merger-related issues I think during that time period we kind of took our eye off the important things like custom really staying very customer focused really focused on innovation uh and being much more a company that's really thinking about workflows and how do we take the best of Dentsply and serona combine it in something that's going to benefit the dentist tremendous amount of upheaval in our company about two and a half years ago uh the team that was put together to run dense ply Sirona you know that the board stepped in and felt that there needed to be a pretty significant change and I came in after that uh you know what i've been doing over the last two and a half years is actually deliver on the vision I mean I think Dentsply Sirona has the opportunity to be the most consequential dental company in the world because we're going to bring innovation uh at a pace I don't think we've seen before and we have a in my opinion a great opportunity to globalize it very quickly so it's one come up with a good innovation but then how do you bring it all around the world very quickly well on dental town if you google Dentsply Sirona the first thing that comes up is they want to know if you're still on in las Vegas on October 1-3 at the brand new Caesars form in Vegas we are not how are we have made the decision that uh you know in conjunction with the town that we we're gonna do a virtual ds world we have a outstanding you know by the way I’m probably Howard breaking this story on your podcast uh but you know we're going to do a virtual ds world we're working with our partners shine and patterson uh we've got an unbelievable lineup of clinical education entertainment some other stuff so we're going to create an event we have some really exciting new news as well as promotions for people so it'll it will not be its seizures you know which by the way bums me out the fun events in dental ds world and ids both kind of gone virtual or not being attended so oh is ids already declared control for march I ids we're not going to participate in they're looking to see how they make it a little bit more virtual um wow I didn't even think of that that's in cologne germany so for the americans uh um united states a highly fragmented dental industry where every state has their own meetings and all that but Europe pretty much has the mother of all dental meetings every other year in march in cologne germany which cologne was the furthest outreach of the roman empire and they still have a wall around the town it's the um there's still a huge italian population you get the best of italian food german food the whole town knows that you're not from around these parts and everyone helps you get on the train and buy your tickets and oh it's just it's the best meeting ever I think i've been to like five times yeah well ids uh ids is gonna be a lot more limited this year given you know international travel restrictions and for us we felt that you know we didn't want to bring our customers and our people theirs but I gosh Howard I hope I hope everyone is looking forward to the day when things get a little closer back to normal and we could do ideas but ds world gonna be great I would urge everyone uh to sign up I think you're gonna see a startling uh virtual event and one of the speakers um that I’m excited to watch and I can't wait I mean obviously samara prairie is the bomb I mean he lives up to I’m in the same town as he is I live he's in rich Scottsdale I’m in poor phoenix but uh but uh my you're also gonna have Theresa Dolan I mean she's your chief clinical officer she's a member of the Santa fee group on-site though I mean she's a legend in dentistry what's she gonna be speaking on uh terry's going to do a couple things she's going to talk you know in general about where dense supply Sirona is going and how we can provide as much clinical education as we can that's the first thing she's also very much uh in tune with where how we're bringing young scientists in and she'll talk about it terry by the way so when you're the dean of the university of Florida dental school and you know there's not a subject in dentistry that you can't touch on so uh she'll again she'll talk about where we're going what we're doing how clinical education works and how do we get more science-oriented young dentists into the field I want to go back to um samir pury uh he was one of the earliest townies on dentaltown I mean I think he was like one of the first hundred or whatever he's got like a gazillion posts uh but he's up the street in the um spear education and um spear um you know they basically talk a lot of their continued education is on the fast growing segments I mean uh I believe looking the numbers I got my mba from uh asu I know you're from notre dame so feel free to correct me I don't even know if asu's accredited uh but um my um you know when I look at the numbers dentistry kind of is just drifting up with the cpi index except for two areas implants and clear aligners and um here at sphere um you guys uh they their implant um ce does a lot with a Dentsply Sirona astra um and aligners uh they teach the sure smile and then the my most passionate that I want my homies to learn is uh endo because of one of the 12 specialties is public health and I firmly believe that when someone's in pain and they go to your office and you can't pull get them out of pain you can't pull the tooth or start an endo if you can't get them out of pain you need to just hand in your license because imagine if you uh broke your leg and went to the hospital and they say don I’m sorry we don't do legs we do arms and ears but not legs I mean it's crazy and endo and ben johnson the founder of uh endo a guy i'd like to get on the show big time uh um but uh my gosh he's just a legend when I first had my first endo question in phoenix in like 87 88 I actually called him and he said well I can't explain it he said it'd be a lot easier if you just hopped on a plane and flew down here in ancilla and I said are you serious and he said yeah so I jumped on southwest airlines for like 200 bucks from phoenix to tulsa oklahoma spent the whole day with them I mean nicest guy in the world but they um so they're doing implants with your dense fly uh astra they're doing endo with your tulsa dental they're doing aligners with your uh Sirona sure smile um and then cad cam um samir has always done that but if you just came out of school um you're a classic 2020 graduate you want to learn everything um where would you point them first implants endo liners cad cam where would you guide them yeah and first uh sam's a dear friend and you could just give him grief as an asu person because he he's a southern cal trojan uh which you know I as a notre dame person have virtually no use for but uh totally kidding it's lots of fun to talk to them you know Howard if I was a student coming out and hanging out a shingle actually the first thing I would do I wouldn't necessarily focus on the individual workflow picking endo clear aligners or implants i'd actually start digitizing my workflow and you know that starts with in in my opinion I really think being able to digitally scan and being able to manipulate whether it's x-rays or a di image um that to me opens up a lot of future for you in terms of okay maybe you want to do endo maybe you want to do implants or maybe you want to do clear aligners basically starting there helps in terms of what dense supply serona believes we want every dentist to practice at the highest level of their licensure and in my opinion a dentist and you said this extremely well you know if you come in I would like a dentist who is using Dentsply serrano equipment to be able to say hey here's I can offer you clear aligners oh single tooth implants or even something a little more complex than that or I can do a basic root canal they can do that and everything that we're going to be doing in the future and if you look at what we started to do with prime scan we really want to help that new dentist by providing the treatment planning software in such a way that they're going to get the confidence and have the clinical chops to or at least the opportunity to refer to some expertise that will allow them to do the procedures but if I was a dentist coming out of school and you know what a challenging environment to coming out right now but I would 100 pick you know whether it's endo or whether it's implants or whether it's clear aligners I would add one of them but I would do it in such a way that I could add the other two in the not too distant future um your company was built on mergers and acquisitions I mean my gosh you uh ransom and randolph in 64 to put that in perspective I was born in 62. uh the cocaine iron company uh in set in 17 in 1976 um that's chairs and stools um gendex in 93 uh eureka x-ray I mean uh health uh just so many um uh acquisitions um when uh I know I’m not gonna ask you publicly uh traded questions because I could have consequence on your stocks but with all that's going on in the pandemic are you looking at m a activity because I always um remind dentists that um when I got my mba I could not believe how the biggest companies in dentistry were built with m a and then you look at dentists like me that are providing it you'll go to a small town and say it has five dentists and you come back 30 years later now it's up to 10 and ever and the dentists are all doing average but then you go to another town and there were five dentists but every time the old man some old man retired the kingpin bottom m a rolled him into his so now instead of going five and now it's down to four then ten years later down to three and then and then these kids ask uh well how is that guy doing three and a half million dollars a year and I say m a activity um general dennis don't do it you guys do it big time um do you see any m a activity around the corner with everything going on oh sure I mean how are you almost you almost have to think about m a activity in in a couple tranches and first you know we get asked about our capital deployment strategy all the time and we say look we'd like to invest in r d and we'd like to bring internally developed innovation but you know then we can't invent everything so you have to think are you going to buy something a little bit more transformational bigger are you going to buy a technology platform that fits in or are you going to do tuck-ins that say hey you know we think it would be great if we had a value-based implant in brazil so you kind of look across those three areas and we're looking you know obviously with the pandemic uh right now our first priority was okay let's get through the pandemic let's keep our employees safe let's make sure our customers are supplied uh but you know we're always looking always looking at m a as an opportunity and uh I think there's some great technology that combined with some of the platforms we're building um but you know nothing believe me I I’m asked constantly uh by our investment committee what you know where are you gonna deploy capital next and look we say uh the biggest thing we should be doing is spending money on our in r d and uh then then we'll look to see how we can add uh growth to our top line through deployment of capital through m a well I loved uh john chambers built on one of the I remember the um the bubble from 94 to 2000 where if you just do a dart it would double and it was just it was so fun but I basically only held four stocks it was uh um the wintel uh intel and um windows and intel and then it was dell and oracle by the way dell's dad was an orthodontist that's pretty cool but cisco john chambers used to say um I’m not gonna put all that stress on my r d I’m gonna wait till somebody out there invents it and builds a great company then I’m just going to get out my checkbook and do m a and uh his r d was basically uh zero he let everybody else do it but going back to my 32-year journey today um in vista um looks just like serena I remember when I first saw Sirona it was part of siemens and then then some big which is kind of like a johnson gillette something like that and the ceo decided they were overweight in healthcare and want to get something else so they spun it off but it was still the same building in austria nobody moved or changed their name or their address or whatever but I was there I mean it was like it was like your parents just left and moved out of the house and it was like um they were so excited that they didn't have to get permission for every move they made and I watched them just blossom and then and then finally um they joined with x-ray and now I see the same thing as danaher I mean um they spun off uh in vista and I used to always think man what would it be like if uh your parents said uh we don't love you anymore we're kicking you out of the house you're on your own and with a small market cap at 3.73 billion it looks just like a baby Sirona do you see investa as a baby serona well I you know whether I see it as a baby serona first amir and his team have done a very nice job I mean that that's a very stressful thing to spin out of a company and you know i've been very impressed with the steps they've been taking in terms of narrowing their focus and you know they're a very good competitor and when I say good competitor they stay focused on the customer you know they do things the right way um you know in terms of a baby Sirona I mean I don't know if they have a yoast fisher who uh was basically the guy who spun serona out and was a larger than life austrian character who in so many ways almost willed Sirona into being but you know look I think invista is a terrific company I mean the nice thing I like about our industry Howard and you know i've been in a lot of different industries this is this is you know if I start talking about you know the henry shines and the pattersons and the bencos and other burke parts of the world they're very good business people and they're good partners to do business with then if you go to like an invista or you go to us or you look at the work that 3m does um you know something like a three shape obviously invisalign you know they're terrific they're highly ethical good business people well let's um you know when in 1993 healthco was your largest um distributor they were the henry shine um of the day and they declared bankruptcy and I remember john miles used to always talking about that that um you know and now with amazon it's pushed to the forefront um at the greater new york meeting you know every year for like four years the last four years when they had the meeting amazon had a booth there and there's like two guys and men in black just standing there like we're amazon and it created a million rumors everywhere you go as rumors and everybody just wants to know the obvious question I mean right now you like you have a thousand reps that call on dentists on the street well so does shine and patterson um but the young millennial is buying on amazon and their question I know they're wondering will you ever sell direct to a dentist on amazon prime or will you only go through um a middleman distributor well there's two points I want to make about that so first you know I think the amazon discussion is overblown in dentistry you know like why do we partner with shine patterson benco or other things and you know you look at the consumable in the equipment market you know they're our order to cash I you know I don't have to go collect money on the parts of the business that run through there they're the service arm I mean when something goes down they've got people in trucks and they go pay for that they offer the financing uh for in in the case of a lot of the equipment and they do the installation around that so I tend to think people want to focus strictly on the order platform and the logistics platform and that's not what the relationship is really built around and why we push our business through those guys so I always start with I think the discussion about the relationship that that the dentists have with their dealer partners and you know whether they have one or two or three is really important because it's kind of a full service thing and we can take advantage of a scaled way of doing business with the dentist the second thing is you know counter to popular belief we actually run close to 40 percent of our business is direct um you know if you if you buy dense supplies throughout an implant that that's a direct business if you buy um a lot of our indo products particularly in the us that's a direct business a lot of what we do in orthodontia is a direct business so you know we deal direct um in in many categories in around the world but you know ultimately the decision you make as a ceo when you're thinking about you know what's the best way to serve the customer you know our dealer partners do a great job for us so the 40 percent of then slicer on a sales is direct to the dentist ben johnson of um tulsa dental because of tulsa oklahoma that was a direct business um do you like how is that business different selling direct and but that when you sell direct to the dennis era you won't sell direct on amazon though right no um you know we really feel that the relationship around the clinical products uh is going to require somebody from our shop or you know provide the continuing education so no we tend to think and indo is a great example and what tulsa did and ben uh you know created is a tremendous company and you know continues to be one of our larger more important franchises and you know what we feel right now is our model is hey let's really innovate and you know we've got to do a better job in endo I think that's an area that you're going to see a lot of activity in the next uh three to five years because we we've spent a lot of time talent treasure getting that pipeline rebuilt um but you know in terms of going in Howard if you were a practicing endodontist or a generalist who's doing a lot of endo procedures you know we feel the training and the relationship is really important to us you know where we figure like aquasol might be a little bit different you know in terms of where it is in the in the food chain and then if you get into stuff like technology and equipment you know if somebody's going to buy you know a full chair side prime scan and prime mill um you know that that somebody's going to have to install and train around that and again the patterson and china in the us and other people around the world provide you know that's something I don't have to build so um when you sell direct is your number one you said uh tulsa dental and endo uh endo number one tulsa dental and implants number two you said it was 40 is that about to break out uh no total dense ply Sirona and is sitting you know 35 to 40 is direct and the two largest businesses are implant and endo you know we don't ever break out the specific size of them but you know they're comparable in size um with the you know I asked a bunch of dennis um what do you what do they want me to ask you and one of the things that's on everybody's mind is they want to know you know you're seeing the you know the whole world you're seeing the dental universe and they're seeing their own dental office and their own you know their own social media followers or whatever um they want to know what is selling differently since the pandemic than before and if they're old they know that some of these things will be panic buying they want to know what you think you're selling more of now that you didn't sell that they'll still be buying years down because old guys like me this is our second rodeo with the virus I mean I graduated 87 and it was hiv and that changed everything and got us to where we are today where we're like a hospital nobody's worried about catching aids at the dental office today but everyone was when um kimberly bergalis claimed she got uh hiv at her dentist in florida and all that stuff blah blah blah so um what are dennis buying since the who declared this a pandemic and what will were they buying today that you think they'll still be buying in 5 10 20 30 years when the next virus comes along you know Howard that's such an important point and thank you for lending your voice to what I think was a premature declaration that you know we need to shut down dennis office you know and you were right on the front lines there so you know thank you uh we appreciate that and your point on hiv aids is exactly right I mean we've dealt with blood-borne pathogens as an industry and you know what the dentist did they said okay you know we're going to have to learn how to deal with blood-borne pathogens how we're going to protect ourselves how we're going to protect our patients how we're going to protect our co-workers and did a remarkable job and I think I think that was really overlooked uh you know when things began to shut down in april like hey guys it's this is not you know we're not out in an environment where you know we're putting patients at risk so first thank you um second you know it's really interesting I think the initial panic buy was all around ppe oh my god I need all the ppe i can get and you know there was a tremendous uh you know we see it on the you know we don't have a huge ppe line but we have some of it and then you know air handling things our pure vac line as an example you see a rush on that interestingly as time has gone on the buying patterns haven't changed a whole heck of a lot and you know there's not ppe is here to stay and I think you know you're going to see more in terms of what are you doing to clean out the operatory you know you're going to see a lot more face shields than other things but you know it it's ppe and I think that's here to stay uh the rest of it Howard it's been remarkable it looks you know we kind of talked about july in our um in some of our investor calls and it there really hasn't been a radical shift in okay this category is hot as a pistol so I do think the dentists uh you know that that were shut down during the pandemic did use the time to assess their practice I mean one of the things we've been happy to see is that people are really looking at single visit dentistry and some of the things that you know prime scan and sarah can do for them but uh by and large you know as we sit here coming up into september things look remarkably similar to what they may have looked like in march with the exception of ppe um hot as a pistol I was born in kansas where the where the heck were you born I was born in new jersey huh that is all new to me I was born in kansas and um hadn't have not heard that one so that's a is that in a bruce springsteen song or a bon jovi song I don't know I probably I you know Howard i've been uh out selling things for a long time so after a while you'll learn some adjectives um you know back to um you know I want to take advantage of your global perspective because you know distance is the major driver in in your whole uh personal framework I mean who you're you know it's funny how you'll meet a dentist oh yeah I’m so lucky I meant the love of my life then you find out they were both born in a town of five thousand it's like what were the odds of that eight billion people and the love of your life was in a town of five thousand but you get to see there's um nobody can tell you exactly how many dentists there are just like they can't tell you the population when I spoke in china I was talking to the president of the chinese association I said how many dentists you have and he says okay now you know that nobody knows I mean when we say we have a billion 300 million people that's plus or minus 100 million then it comes down to your definition of a dentist you know um does he is he just the guy that does it in that small tribe did he go two years for us but I think there's about two million people that their whole life is a dentist do you agree with that number uh it might be a little high but you know it oh you think that's high yeah I think I think I think the number uh in china in particular you know whether they're a unlicensed dentist you know somebody's been two years four years or specialized I mean you know it varies and obviously in other places around the world the requirement's a little bit different so there's probably two million people that practice some form of oral health you know one way or another in terms of somebody who has done some studying where you'd feel comfortable with a you know maybe a class two restoration or a tooth extraction and stuff like that I think the number might be a little lighter than that but how light would you go um I think there's a million do you think it's just a million yeah it's really funny we try to uh it may be more by the way I can I can I could just tell I could interrupt you right here I have I’m connected to one million digitally so if it I want to tell my team there's only a million and we get the whole damn list we've got every debt that's out there now Howard you can spend you can spend my numbers however you want uh but you know it's funny our purpose and mission um you know we go out we say look every day we empower dental professionals all over the world to help people with their oral health and you know basically make a better smile so we decided to quantify that we were trying to tell people how many people do we think does Dentsply Sirona touch in a month who touch people around the world and you know we kind of defined our universe at about a million there's probably more I mean you know we do business that makes sense so a million are sophisticated enough to be buying the sophisticated I mean you sell extremely expensive stuff uh that you're not gonna find in um you know some um 5 000 community of 5000 people without electricity but I want to go back specifically about the hand piece um it seems like america's in love with this loud noisy air turbine and out during the middle of the pandemic with aerosols and Europe seemed to always be more into the electric handpiece do you think the pandemic is going to put downward pressures on air turbines and bring back uh put new momentum behind the electric it could I mean we it's funny you said Howard we've been having a lot of conversations because we participate in both um you know in different places with different products I tend to agree with you around air handled air powered ins we call them instruments but uh you know look I think right now what everyone's doing is let's get through the ppe point one point two is let's figure out how to do patient management in a different way and now okay now that we're kind of getting used to this whole thing should we be looking at electric hand pieces and should we be looking at something like a pure vac that's going to help with you know air management or should we be looking at negative pressure operatories I think we're going to see that play out over the next six months we tend to think that we're pretty heavy player in instruments and look we're ready to go whichever way the market is going to drive it so when you when you talk about um you call them air powered instruments that'd be the high speed handpiece and uh and what else well they're all hand pieces it I mean if you look at the powered hand pieces we obviously do something for endo and then there's you know obviously the basic errors and grinding things so that's kind of how we look at that that business if you will well you know I always thought I i'd never understood what would you know we're supposed to keep one eye on the patient one eye on cost and treat them like you want to be treated and they all complain about the sound of that high speed I mean it's just I don't know if they use it in too many halloween three movies or whatever but the minute they hear that here and uh and plus it has no torque I mean when you're a dentist you can push that bird of the tooth and it'll stop where's the electric it just doesn't have the whiny noises and you can't stop the burr it's just it's all torque um so do you think it's a preference or do you think the virus is going to take it from personal preference to virology recommended it could it could but you Howard the thing when you get to sit in my chair and look at global dentistry all right so you know take scaling and root planning cavitron you know kind of a fixture in the u.s not you know no we like piso over in Europe and the twain shall never meet I think the same it goes with handpiece preferences funny the europeans you know from a chair as an example however we have a line called treatment centers which are not we do not like referring to those as chairs they're extremely sophisticated what we think almost as a partner to the dentist because we put a whole lot of it and those and whatnot and they you know they cost 45 to 60 to 70 000 and you know if you said to somebody a dentist in the us hey we want you to pony up all that much money on something like that you know the answer by and large has been no why well the europeans are going to say we're going to amortize this over 20 years you know I’m going to use this in place of a dental assistant and I’m willing to invest money it's kind of the same thing in hand pieces it's just a different time horizon it's a different way of how they practice and in you know I do think there's a market in the us for electric hand pieces I think whether it gets mandated or not um you know we'll see I haven't seen enough data from our own guys to really support hey you know we would see a transformational shift in a market based on a requirement but you know you look back what three years ago when the fda said we got to improve the sterilization of instruments within the office and you know we did see some change took a little while but we saw some change after that um you know i've always said you know um there's two americas when it comes to patients I mean half just totally buy on price they're challenged economically they'll go to the lowest price and if their employer or government or whatever gives them a subsidy to go somewhere they'll always go there and then the other half is kind of market differentiation and they just don't want a standard model t ford where you have any color you want as long as it's black they pay more for cosmetics and things like that and that's what we're seeing during the pandemic um I mean um it seems like every single person I know 30 and under thinks is an overblown joke and that I’m uh then and they're and they're embarrassed to see me afraid of something they like I just never would have pictured you to be the one scared in the corner wearing a mask you know it's just crazy um but the other half that you know that that are afraid of this damn buyers um they uh they'll call up and say well I don't want to come in because and they'll say well tell you what if you prepay for your appointment um I’ll schedule an appointment when you come in and it'll just be you and the doctor and the assistant so after hours and there that's what they're doing on fridays saturdays and sundays and it's kind of a rebirth I’m seeing a rebirth of cerec in my backyard because they'll come in and they'll do that um root canal and I like to do the root canal billet and crown in one deal because if you prepare the tooth for its final restoration it's a million times easier to do a root canal than drilling through this little hole the size of a bb and doing it like you feel like you're stevie wonder when you're going through a crown top um so you do the whole root canal you do the build up you scan you mill and they're in there for two and a half hours and they give you a check for 2500 um do you see the pandemic putting upward pressures on a chairside milling that it's going to give new light to it because of this I Howard as a matter of fact you're now invited to be a dense splice around the world speaker because you just in one shot some exactly how we look at the market and you know it's interesting that you brought up endo you know the discussions we've been having internally are like hey let's start from diagnosis and go all the way to the fact that you're going to put a crown on top of this and what better way to do a crown than with chairside dentistry so first we've been very happy with how much traction we are getting with and whether it's chair side we tend to think of it as you know uh single visit dentistry and we've had a lot of appeal around that hey look you know if you're going to do a single unit crown or if you're going to do some of the services we offer off the cerec and prime scan and prime mill you sit there and say hey it makes sense you right now are somewhat limiting your patient flow so let's just get it done once let's let the patient come in let's not put a temp crown on it let's bring them back in let's adjust it now let's take a really great picture of it let's build something that's specific to exactly the tooth you just extracted and it looks exactly like it because it is exactly the tooth I mean the tolerances right now in our mill empowered are just literally off the charts so it you know like you would know this better than I every tooth is unique to every human being well you know we're going to give you your unique pretty darn close to your unique tooth pack and doing it in a single visit we think the economics are incredibly compelling well I mean I mean quest was the biggest practice management legend that this they started the whole space of practice managers in like the late 70s early 80s and basically they went around the country and every dentist had one chair one treatment room and maybe a half for emergencies and they and bob barkley was going around teaching them you got to have the hygiene department and quest was saying you have to have more chairs um but it's gone from where I’m gonna go numb up a patient go see the crown go do a hygiene you know the ppe fees are prohibiting me from running like I always ran from 87 to yesterday and now the pandemic is saying um uh it's gonna be you're just gonna walk in that room and you're gonna knock it all out and by the way dennis I am this this is why I hate golf um I see you on the golf course and you are the most competitive guy in the world and you're so competitive and then I seen your dental office like oh well I only do a root canal if it's on the front tooth and I can see it and it's like why are you so competitive in golf and then when it comes to endo half of my homies won't do a molar root canal and they're trying to learn how to do bleaching bonding veneers I mean I could never tell any woman on earth oh ma'am you know you'd look so much better if you lighten your teeth because I know she's thinking yeah I could tell you a hundred ways how you could look better um you know why don't you get a wig and a tan and lose 50 pounds um I’m a doctor I like people that come in in pain I’m not a salesman trying to sell them veneers they come in and they're in pain and it's a thousand dollar procedure insurance pays 80 you become their hero and half the dentist I mean I just did a two-hour podcast with cliff ruttle on last friday that I’m gonna release tomorrow or whatever it's like dude you're a doctor or you're not and if you're a doctor you get them out of pain and if you can't remove the tooth and you can't do a molar root canal um it's not you I mean how do you get an a in math physics chemistry in biology I mean I mean you're the only I mean there's probably only the dentist in town know the difference between trig and geometry I mean they're so smart that fear overrides them and they just get fear I can't believe fear gets the best of so many deaths what would you tell um the young because you were a salesman for years half the graduating class I’m here in phoenix with two schools a.t still in mesa midwestern glendale half the class says they don't want to do mullorundo half and this has been going on for decades what would you say that little girl with 400 000 in student loans which means she only has to do 400 molar root canals and she's paid back the bank yeah she's afraid of it what would you tell her I would say don't be afraid of it I you know the and I completely agree with your discussion lying here which is hey you first I think it's fear because they don't experience in the dental school you know you're not doing a whole lot of root canals you almost say you got to do something three four five times before you get a real comfort level I would invest in yourself what I would literally tolerate you know I have three daughters um none of them were dentists but it you know what are their ages uh we're 32 31 and 27. boys in the exact same category any of them married I mean is there something we could work out here [Laughter] kidding as I but I would literally tell my middle daughter hey invest in yourself which is go find you go find Howard and could I spend a day and learn how you do root canals because everything we've seen from an educational perspective when we're out with spear we're out with the large dental schools is it's not that complex a procedure it's something you can handle quite easily it's just you have to do the first you know you have to watch somebody you have to participate in different parts of it for two or three then you have to do two or three of their own and then by the way you have to go back to your practice and you have to do it it's not a skill okay I went and saw how would I spend or like a cliff ruddle I went and spent a day with cliff ruttle and uh you know you can't do all the work and then come back to your practice and say yeah I’ll get to that in a couple weeks when I feel confident it's and by the way the equipment today is so good is you know whether it's a you know if you're looking at the sophistication of the x-ray machines if you have a digital scanner preferably an omni camera or a prime scan you're going to get you know a fair amount of treatment planning software that can really help you lock in okay this is what it's going to look like when it's done that's a prime scan yeah well prime skin is going to do a really good job on the on the edges and you know basically the limits and whatnot so you know if you if you are if you're that little girl Howard yeah and by the way if I showed up to you hey Howard I may have done one uh my second year I haven't ever done this I mean could you walk me through it I mean one of the steps would be okay let's take a good picture of what we're looking at okay let's think about the procedure from start to finish then let's and you just articulated why are you gonna try and do a whole root canal before prepping the tooth for the crown I mean by the way that's not uh that that's not earth's you know earth-shattering new news so i'd invest in yourself I would find a mentor I would take advantage of the equipment that's available and to your point if you are a you know 30 year old who's coming out with 400 000 in debt I would urge them to practice at the highest level of their license whether that's endo implants or clear liners because to your point you are a doctor you're trained to do this uh yeah um and you um when you don't know how to do it and so many people love it like I would rather retreat a failed molar root canal than play 18 holes of golf and my boys grew up we were the first house next to the country club so I mean you could you could go there for breakfast lunch and dinner golf whatever and i'd still rather do a molar root canal than golf so you're just doing it wrong and instead of trying to buy tiger woods clubs why don't you just learn what the people who love it do and um and all and the other thing is the endodontist the endodontists have all the toys and they do uh well they used to do eight or nine molars a day until they fell in love with microscopes and now the microscope has drastically slowed them down to about four or five a day but they feel better they have more purpose they have more why because they think they're doing a better job um let's change subjects completely to uh dsos I like to talk about dsos because you and me have an mba um I think rick workman you know he's a dentist I know all the chieftains of these guys and they're um I mean a dentist has a hard time running his own office and then here's rick running a thousand offices don't you think that maybe just maybe rick might know more about the business of dentistry than someone struggling in one office so I always like to point out what they're doing and when companies come to me and they have an idea I always put up my five fingers and they fail them every time I they always they always want me to sign an nda I say of course I’m not going to feed the lawyers and then I say all I do is dentistry I mean I’m not going to do that and then they show me anyway and I say is it faster easier better higher quality smaller and it's always no it's slower and more expensive so but it'll be good for the king and I’m like well I’m not interested in the king before henry ford started ford there were 86 car companies making one car a year for the kings and queens henry made a car for everyone and I don't know if it's faster easier higher quality um you know it's going to work and so I always want to try to find out if they have something that makes total sense business wise I say don't explain it to a single owner operator dennis he doesn't even know what his overhead is go explain it to someone like bob fontana or steve thorne um but how um how do you see uh dsos versus single solo practices right now well you know Howard you almost delineated how I look at them and how you set the question up I mean you know there's two things that go on a dentist's office there's the business of the dentist office and then there's the clinical practice and I think as time goes on the an individual practitioner like you would sit there and say what you know what's my preference and how I want to operate within the business environment I think the dsos and you mentioned rick or steve or the others you know look these guys have done a very nice job on trying to make sure that the dentist focuses on practicing great clinical uh procedures on their patients I mean and here let me worry about ordering uh you know ppe for you let me make sure that I’m managing or factoring your collections or other things like that so I think the ds the dso model has been really an important development and one that I think will continue uh over time but I also if you look at analogs from other categories if you look at like how optometry developed or you know some other areas I think there's always going to be a big you know individual dentist practice I think there's going to be dsos now whether they all get to be the size of heartland or whether they tend to be you know maybe it's 100 offices or whatnot I think the idea that the dsos are providing a business framework that lets the dentist practice uh you know really focus on the clinical side I think that's got a huge amount of merit and uh your five questions aren't all that different than mine I always I always throw in my fifth might be is it cheaper but uh yeah mine's faster easier higher quality lower price and smaller like start with the industrial revolution you know the steam engines were huge but they could only pump water out of a coal mine but as they got smaller they could put on a boat so um and I remember my first um patterson sold me my uh omni cam my first intro camera holy moly was the size of a refrigerator the refrigerator in my college dorm room wasn't that big it'd be two of them I mean you had to have the biggest dental assistant in your office move that from room to room and it was 38 000 but over time what happened to it got smaller cheaper um you mentioned bob fontana to me that that's a interesting story because of all the dsos he seems to have the most targeted customers seems like all the other ones um want the um not the half to buy the lowest price but the half you know the suburbians you know they like medium household incomes of 60 000 a year income or higher but bob fontana specifically focused on going where the others aren't and he had an in-house lab and in in the 80s when I was in high school a lot of the dentists had an in-house lab and I lost my uncle as a patient to aspen because if he came to me he'd have to drop off his removable and then pick it up and then I sent him to the lab and said at the end of the day but aspen has a lab and all my removable patients love it and I love it because when they come in and they say do you do a denture I’m like oh my god did you know aspen has their own lab hell get in my car I’ll drive you there because last thing I want to do is a damn denture but um when you look at um you know that's where uh dentistry started aspen's got that lab chairside milling is you know again back in high school um a dennis might be plumb for four operators but the fourth operatory was a lab tech and it would be a lady in there and she had a bunsen burner and wax and she did the dentures and the removables and you're big with this chair side milling and scanning and all that but what about the lab do you think Dentsply will ever get behind um a mini office lab because every lab I see in a dental office it's uh it's not organized it's not succinct there's no master plan you can't just go back there and say this is how we attitude to a partial this is how we fix a broken denture this is how we staining glaze do you think going forward over the next 20 30 years that dental offices will have better sophisticated in-house labs like aspen is doing today I don't know um it's interesting I would see the world developing slightly differently and first you know what aspen's done is remarkable and you know they've built a great business um I think as they be you know as they move more into urban areas and there's labs that can get you something back and you know kind of same time it'll be interesting to see how that model plays forward but I would say Howard over time look the evolution of digital dentistry is going to bifurcate things a little bit of a different way I think people are going to be able to send a digital treatment plan to a lab and get it back almost instantly you know look if it's a cost thing maybe it'll go offshore but you know the speed at which uh you're able to operate is going to change significantly with digital dentistry the second thing in our mind is we believe you know chairside mills are important uh you know prime mill for us is a really important new product and you know I it's not there today but in the future is there you know a 3d printing capacity that might you know take the place of what was done in an office lab so I think really dentists are going to have the opportunity to choose um you know what service level do I want to provide my patient you know do I want to do single visit dentistry I want to get everything done in an hour or you know are they comfortable with I can get this to a lab and I can have it back in three or four hours you know I think it's really going to be what what's the level of service and I do think technology you know as I look at in the evolution of mills in our company you know they're getting better and better and better and you know let's see where other technologies over the long term come with something like a 3d printing and where does that go um there are 12 specialties in dentistry now there was only nine when I got out of school um they've added some more um it seems like of all the specialties in dentistry it seems like orthodontics has the by far the most competition I mean a lot of dentists um complain that they have to compete against a dso but man orthodontist is going against some smiles direct club which has a publicly traded none of the dsos are publicly traded and I want to know what your thoughts on that why are none of the dsos publicly traded and here's smiles direct club out of middle america nashville tennessee with a 2.7 billion market cap what is an orthodontist supposed to make of that and if you were specifically if you were in dental school and they're and they said they wanted to specialize would you agree that um that orthodontist would um be incurring the most competition going forward um there's a couple things there Howard so uh let's talk about smile direct or invisalign because it's they're just different ways of reaching a patient you know if you look at the orthodontic market at least in north america and you're seeing it replicated around the world there's almost two things that go on I mean one is repairing pediatric or you know it's pediatric specialty oriented where you know every all three of my daughters wound up in braces you know that you know the brackets and bands and that's conventional where the growth has been explosive is really in the adult retreatment kind of the aesthetic market and the technology has gotten really good over time so if you were to sit there and say I agree with your statement that orthodontics has gotten competitive but it's gotten competitive in that kind of adult aesthetic space I think you know the traditional uh adolescent uh you know kind of functional treatment continues to be you know an area that that looks like it's really looked like for the last 25 years and I think clear aligners will penetrate down uh but it'll be a little bit more hybrid you know obviously clear liners are a little bit challenged in leveling teeth versus spinning them and some other things so you know look I tend to think the base market is going to look like it's always looked I think the question is how do you best position yourself in the adult aesthetic market and then understand there's going to be people who are really driven by hey I’m going to go to smile direct I’m going to do you know quick scan and I’m going to get clear liners but there's going to be a lot of people saying gee I’m going to make a significant investment I want to go to the dentist and then how did how do you differentiate yourself in terms of service and other things uh you said you were upset because all three of your daughters needed uh um braces I actually had five kids and one of them got a ten cavities so I let him go and that's why I only have four I traded that kid in um Howard now I I’m grateful for the experience that I garnered uh having my children with braces so um you know so I um I want my I want to talk going to telemedicine and uh back to these surgeries it looks like when I look at the market here in phoenix as far as you know in retail obviously you want one-stop shop I remember um when I started lecturing first and going to uh foreign countries where even in advanced countries like australia in the in the 90s early 90s um you know you'd go to a baker and you go to a butcher and you go to a vegetable guy and I’m just like god in america that's all under one roof why would you know what I mean but it was very traditional and well the retail aspects of dentistry they don't want to be uh moved around so you're seeing specialists now going into dental offices the most in demand to come into your office oral surgery number one endo perio pediatric ortho prostate dental anesthesia oral facial pain oral medicine oral path oral radiology and of course dental public health lasts do you think that um we have two forces now specialists are coming into offices for one stop shop and then telemedicine again it's keeping are you dentist focused or are you patient focused and when dentists tell me they're oh I’m totally patient folks I’m like okay the largest employer of phd economists is the federal reserve and they've done several papers that show a hundred million americans can't go to the dentist Monday through four I mean the doctor Monday through friday eight to five what are your hours Monday through Thursday eight to four okay so mathematically you're insane because I know you got a a in physics or you couldn't have been a dentist so they want consumerism and consumerism is um I look at my mom my mom is so excited because she's 82 years old and now she gets to get on her ipad and talk to her doctor and she doesn't have to get in her car and drive across town I mean think of not the risk of correcting corona but what's the risk that an 82 year old lady wrecks her car I mean my mom drives like a bat out of hell I mean she's just crazy driver um so do you think there's going to be more dental focused dentistry delivery in the future with talent dentistry telemedicine and specialists coming into offices for one stop shop yes I it's really interesting again there's an analog with two uh in the vision care category which is kind of developed in along similar lines where you had a ophthalmologist bring in optometrist you had optometrists bring bringing ophthalmologists so there's a very good analog there I tend to think how are you really on a good point I mean try and find an endodontist that that's going to be working on a Saturday on you know where you could actually do a uh an appointment so look I tend to think that over time it is going to evolve around the patient and you know you have an mba and you run your practice like a business giving great clinical care well you know if you start with a patient hey look you never want that patient leaving the confines of your office so how are you going to bring procedures to them by the way I you know if you look at dental monitoring and some of the stuff we're seeing with clear liners the technology i'd say very early but it's starting to be promising just in terms of monitoring and doing some basic telemedicine work for your mom or other people ultimately though Howard I’m I still have a tremendous amount of faith in the role of the wet finger dentist and serving their customers so you know yeah telemedicine's gonna be helpful it I I’m not sure it's gonna transform the category um are you gonna have any telemedicine telehealth uh plays at Dentsply I mean is that one of your focused things that you're uh looking into or would you say not really I would say not really how again we have it it's done in service of other things it's like we're not going out and saying how do we create the Dentsply sorona telemedicine division as opposed to how do we create the Dentsply Sirona uh you know implant workflow process where telemedicine could play a role in it I don't know what's rude or inappropriate for me to do but teledoc health you can't watch the news without seeing that what do you think of companies like teledoc health and wall street loves them I mean wall street wall street is in love with teledoc health zoom uh humanity insurance uh their deal I mean um any but anybody who says they have any kind of if you could just add telehealth to your name uh your stock goes up and uh and that and then those ones again the merging the fast one teledoc held zoom humana anthem cvs I robot cast light health uh what do you think of this uh wall street love affair uh I in some ways it's really well placed Howard i mean look there there's a challenge right now that the american healthcare system was built to manage acute care situations I mean I’m sick I need to go to a hospital that's the infrastructure that was created yet most of the spending is on chronic disease management that can be done remotely so I think what wall street correctly figures out is hey there's got to be a different paradigm for us to manage chronic disease better and a lot of that can be interactive through telehealth and other things and it looks like people who build a better mousetrap that allows that to happen are going to be in the right side of long-term cost management as focused on chronic disease management so I completely understand it so um I can't believe I got an hour with the ceo running a gazillion billion dollar company um but um and I could talk to you all night long but what are you most passionate about tonight I mean this is uh august uh 25th it's a Tuesday um what are you what are you excited for the rest of the year this is august so we're about to go into september October November December uh the last um four months of this year what are what are you going to be focused on what are you most passionate about what are you most excited about uh a couple things Howard so you know first I would I would sit there and say hey look as we've seen offices open and they've really come back you know our biggest challenges right now is to make sure like we weren't making anything for two or three months how do we go out and open all our factories and make sure that we're delivering the customer service that we need to the second thing that we're really focused on is we've got a great new product lineup coming in 2021 and we have to deliver it so even though it was a pandemic we can't stop uh you know really pushing in our mind what we think is going to be a best-in-class new product portfolio as we go through the year oh you don't have to wait for serrano world just tell me now oh sure so tell me well how did they sign up for that uh death place around the world hit our site it's I think we're not open yet but we will be shortly but just know literally hit our hit tennis plus around calm and you can by the way guys this is not a commercial don didn't even give me a case of beer for this interview this is all uh the love of journalism but um I but it's I can't see it on the site but it will be on the site soon there'll be a link to it will be and Howard I will given who I’m talking to I will make sure that the site is posted to you last thing I’ll just tell you that I’m really excited about I hope there's college football I mean let's break down let's break it all down I mean I I’m it's a privilege to lead the fifteen thousand people at Dentsply Sirona and interact every single day it really is on a global company I love doing what I’m doing because I really think our company is going to help transform dentistry and make all your listeners lives more productive because I really think you can say we're going to deliver better patient care that's going to be better for the dentist and you know so that's a great place to be um but i'd like a little normalcy you know in the background what was this um whenever I uh read about hertz I always uh think about Sirona because um most of the mbas my professors in my backyard the underscoring factor to the hertz meltdown was the ceo moved the headquarters from new york to florida and a bunch of the people didn't follow and he had a whole new team and then the pandemic and um you moved from uh york Pennsylvania eight hours south to charlotte um did you did you have the same issues where a lot of lifers stayed in york Pennsylvania and you felt like uh it was kind of a hertz rental car deal where for like six months to a year you had a bunch of new kids on the block and we're kind of running a little lean on experience I mean seriously I mean everybody's talking about it with hurts um now well first York’s still open I mean we still have a tremendous presence up in new york what we did is we created kind of the international headquarters down in charlotte which was bringing people in from all over the world so we'd like to think we're retaining the experience and we're adding some you know new perspectives from the outside and to do that you know it to get to york was a little bit of a challenge for we have a huge implant business that's run out of Sweden we have a huge endo business run out of Switzerland we have a huge uh you know cad cam business run out of Bensheim germany you know getting flights and all that stuff just becomes a lot easier so now we're uh if you look at our performance in 2019 we're quite happy with it and we were off to a good start pre-pandemic so it's kind of uh kind of showing that that the models work and how what are your thoughts now of uh Scottsdale Arizona now that the legend himself intia's retired is are you heartbroken is it uh are you gonna cry the next time you come out not seeing your man in tears uh no I’m sure empty oz and kaleem and rez aren't going anywhere and uh you know I was actually talking mti's and I was meeting the dogs winston in kenya the other day and uh he's a dear friend that is uh I by the way retirement for empty oz means instead of working 22 hours a week he's now working on 18. so stay tuned there's a there's a you know I’m waiting for the same announcement you are it's like what what's next fts so I don't know oh my god that guy could have one new idea during dinner that could take a hundred people the rest of their life to implement I mean he's just an amazing free thinker um I just can't tell you how um much of an honor it is to come on this show um do tell ben johnson that um I’m we're releasing cliffs ruddles two hours tomorrow and i'd really like to add him to the show because that that I mean I can't think of an endodontist as that had such a significant impact on ando more than him in my lifetime in the last 30 years I mean who changed endo more than ben johnson you know and kept innovating so uh Howard I’ll find I owe you two things I owe you the cs world link and I will find a path to uh mr johnson dr john oh um well I mean my gosh and what I what I want to remind my homies about ben you know I look at ben and my gosh when anybody try something new they tried to eat his lunch in the 80s because he had a he was leaving a solid carrier into the uh the root canal and he made it faster easier higher better qual all that stuff like that but he had one little carrier shoe and my gosh um tribes are always hardest on their own people I noticed that growing up with five sisters my sis one of my sisters to get mad at another something they did I’m like your best friend let me tell you what she does and it's like they always matter at their sisters for one-fifth of the behavior and dentists they eat their colleagues alive and chew them up it's probably just because that's what they're most focused on but what I’m most proud of ben is how he was bulletproof you could you could say anything you wanted to wrong with any of his new ideas and he just you just keep mind his own business and the rest was history hey you look Howard if we can all focus on ultimately what's best for the patient you know how are we leaving them in better oral health with better smiles feeling more confident about themselves that's what all our collective mission is you know and if we all start there and we focus on innovation people like ben have transformed categories and I think made people's lives a whole heck of a lot better so what a wonderful way to you know make sure that that's your legacy as you pass it on transform the category then what a that's not a participation plaque and I also want to intel what you said was so profound and then it's got to realize you know they're always fighting with each other and they're fighting with dental insurance and they're fighting with the board and all that stuff and that's just simple um you know algebra I mean it's dentist insurance board regulators manufacturers but it's all divided by the patient and if all of dentistry would keep one eye on the patient and one eye on cost eight billion humans would have the freedom to afford to save their mouth and their oral health so I don't care um how other people blah blah blah just keep your eye on the cost because if you take your eye off cost then people can't afford to go to the dentist and they lose their teeth they lose their self-esteem they lose their health and we'll all work together if we all keep one eye on the patient one iron cost don thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule to come on my show and talk to my homies we thoroughly appreciate it thanks Howard hopefully enjoyed it and thank you all stay safe during the pandemic stay healthy during the pandemic and know that Dentsply Sirona stands right behind you to support you and go notre dame go irish have a great day

Category: Paradental and Infection Control, Public Health

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How to perform dentistry faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost. Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dentistry-uncensored-with-howard-farran/id916907356
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Dentistry Uncensored with Howard Farran
How to perform dentistry faster, easier, higher in quality and lower in cost. Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dentistry-uncensored-with-howard-farran/id916907356
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